


Always Remember That

by bukkunkun



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Childhood, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Headcanon, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 00:49:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bukkunkun/pseuds/bukkunkun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We could have had something, Cecil. Always remember that."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always Remember That

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily inspired from Attention's [A Little Song](http://attention.bandcamp.com/track/a-little-song) and lots of unprecedented Earl feels during a 4-day trip with no wifi and a working tablet.
> 
> Illustrations done by [my moirail frilly](sillehfrilleh.tumblr.com) over at tumblr.
> 
> A fewheadcanons before we start: We believe that the "Voice of Night Vale" is just as an important a position as being the mayor--the town, being completely sentient, chooses someone to use as its medium, its expression of sentience through a physical human body. Every lifetime of the Voice, Night Vale chooses a child that it will use to embody itself, and their mark will manifest in the form of a third eye, a purple flush to their blood and in the years of maturation, moving tattoos. The Chosen One will then be cared for by the entire town's residents (this is mandatory) and will be trained to be a radio broadcaster for the town to express its sentience. 
> 
> Long headcanons aside, let's get goin'!
> 
> EDIT: GODDAMNIT EPISODE 33

The first time their hands touched they were very young.

Two boys, wide-eyed and more than frightened still, they stood together before the bloodstone circle encircling Night Vale’s Blood Eagle that represented the chapter of the Boy Scouts in their little community.

At first, he had hardly heard about the boy he stood next to. All he knew was that he was the _chosen one_ for their little town, whatever that meant, and that he wasn’t really going to stay for long in the Boy Scouts—he was there to serve his mandatory time as a result of being chosen by the Blood Eagle. (He heard from his mother that it had been rather petulant about not being allowed the _Chosen One_ boy into its ranks and it ate a spokesperson a day before because it was so upset)

At the time, he had found it terribly unfair—neither of them had asked for this, this _mandatory_ kidnap that took them away from the safety of their parents’ home and love, and yet this boy with him could get through this like it was just a mere slap on his wrist!

He had planned on acting cold, aloof, maybe even _mean_ to this unfair boy, but the sight of the blood-splattered Blood Eagle standing before them, staring them down with its golden eyes sent his blood freezing in his veins and all his bravery dissipate from his mind and his knees began to shake.

He couldn’t do this. No, he just can’t!

Honour be damned, he really wasn’t going to do this—

Suddenly a hand touched his and he turned to see the boy with three eyes smiling at him slightly, and wide-eyed and slack-fingered, he allowed the boy to slide his hand into his, and their fingers interlaced together.

Earl had never felt so safe and warm before.

As he and the boy approached the Blood Eagle and began with the bloodletting ritual, he knew that there was _something_ he could have— _would_ have.

And, possibly, perhaps, it was this boy with his hand in his right then: Cecil Gershwin Palmer, the boy chosen by their home’s sentience to embody its voice.

* * *

Earl had never been the most confident of children, he wasn’t the one to talk very well, but Cecil’s amazing articulation and skills in speech helped him get through the worst of his stutters and lisps when he stood in front of a crowd.

“Loyal and independent,” Cecil had told him, in one of the many times they laid huddled together in a small tree house they had built together with his father. “That’s the first thing a Boy Scout is.” With a bright grin, the boy sat up again, puling Earl up to his feet with him. “So, let’s get that Valentines’ Day speech practiced, Earl!”

“But Cecil, that’s so easy for you to say. You’ve been trained since you were a kid to talk well.”

The boy pouted at him. “Yes, well, that may be true, but that doesn’t mean that you get to whine about it at me.” He rolled over before getting up on his knees, picking up the paper that the organisers had prepared for Earl to use in his speech. “Hm. Perhaps you could try improvising instead?”

“Are you insane?” Earl snapped, sitting up as well to grab the paper from his best friend’s hands. “That’s ridiculous—if i mess up, you _know_ what happens?”

“What does, then?” Cecil simply asked, and Earl fell silent.

“... Well, uh.”

The mischievous smile that spread across Cecil’s lips made his heart stop slightly, and his hands stutter in their movement, making him drop the paper in his hands.

“I told you,” he smiled, “They won’t care—and all I speak of is the truth.” He assured, bending over to pick the paper up.

“Oh, wait, I’ll do that—” Earl began to say, bending over to do the same, and their fingers brushed. “Oh, sorry,” he apologised, lifting his head just as Cecil did, their noses pressing against each other’s, their eyes locking with each other.

“You can do it, Earl.” Cecil’s milky voice told him, purple eyes and the never-blinking third eye all staring right at him unfailingly. “I believe in you.”

They were four little words, but they were enough, to spark strings of letters, lacing together to form words into his mind, weaving together on a convoluted tapestry that wound around his heart, plaguing his mind with its whispered syllables and intonations as he slept in the nights that counted down to the day he would speak them.

The entire time, they all spoke to him, in hushed, soft and comforting whispers into his ear.

The night before the speech, Earl realised they were speaking in Cecil’s voice.

* * *

“You did it.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“I think you deserve something.”

“Do I?”

“Yes. I think so.”

The two boys sat together again in their little tree house, watching the lights above their heads in the void far above them, fearless and content despite they were told to be so. Tonight, however, the darkness swirling above them was a friend, and that and the moon (whether it really existed or not) was a face high above them, both seeing but not looking.

They were both so alone, and yet so full of comfort.

Their fingers unlaced from each other’s and Cecil sat up to look down at Earl, his violet eyes (all three of them) clear and glittering despite the darkness around them. From his position lying beneath the boy, Earl could see how cat-like they were, round irises slitting into slits, the moon pupil in Cecil’s third eye shifting left and right.

“What do I get, then?” he half-murmured, still entranced by Cecil’s eyes, so pretty purple in the dark blue of the night void above them.

The boy above him smiled gently and shuffled to the side to straddle his waist. “What you deserve.” He simply replied, before leaning forward and softly pressing their lips together.

It felt like electricity, sparks running from where his lips touched Cecil’s. Laborious, instantaneous, spontaneous, wondrous, and completely brand new. His hands both itched to pull Cecil in more, to wrap his arms around the boy above him and pull him closer, but also wanted to stay back in fear of ruining this moment any further.

Before he came up with any decision, Cecil pulled back slightly, breathless and still, cheeks tinted with purple and his eyes wide and _alive_.

“You can kiss me back, you know.” He said quietly, and that was all it took for Earl to reach up and pull him into a full kiss once more.

Braces snagged against soft lips ands shy tongues poked each other quizzically, but it was the most thrilling thing to ever happen in Earl’s life.

He wouldn’t give the world to change it.

Not even as he is dragged away from the world he knew, by whatever unknown force that had decided to take him away from this realm and into one he both not knew of and yet feared of.

To his left and right, scattered in his peripheral vision, he could hear the anguished screams of the people being dragged away as he was, begging for mercy, for their lives, for themselves, screaming in agony of loss and fear, as children dragged them mercilessly into the burlap tent.

There was only one thing on Earl’s mind as tears streamed down his cheeks, and only one name escaped his lips, a name that haunted his mind ever since they were little, on the run from everything, until the day they grew up and went their separate ways.

All that time, Earl still felt the same, after all.

“ _Cecil_!”

His throat feels torn, his sinus blocking up and burning as tears and hot air and sand filled his lungs as he saw the last rays of light in his sad life, and the image of a smiling boy with soft, braces-cut lips and vibrant violet eyes fills his senses as he slowly, slowly lets go of reality.

He remembers the smile, the last precious moments he spent with him.

“ _We could have had something, Cecil_.”

_Always_

_remember_

_that._

_ i love you _


End file.
